An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul

@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has ap­pealed to phar­ma­cists and phar­ma­cy own­ers to take their oaths se­ri­ous­ly and up­hold the laws of T&T.

Mak­ing the call when he ap­peared on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, he cred­it­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of phar­ma­cists for do­ing the right thing.

In­di­cat­ing that the Min­istry of Health (MOH) had no over­sight to stop the sale of un­reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in the un­der­ground mar­ket, which he de­clared was a glob­al prob­lem, the min­is­ter promised, “We are try­ing our best to cut off the ten­ta­cles of this glob­al prob­lem.”

He, how­ev­er, trained his guns on the own­ers/op­er­a­tors of phar­ma­cies.

“What we are ask­ing for is a high­er de­gree of ethics in the in­dus­try to pro­tect an un­sus­pect­ing pub­lic in the glob­al fight against un­reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals,” Deyals­ingh said.

Al­though he was un­able to speak of the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a raid at a Trinci­ty ware­house on Oc­to­ber 27, in which po­lice seized $1.5 mil­lion worth of un­reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, he said pro­tect­ing pa­tient health was the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty at the min­istry.

Fol­low­ing sev­er­al re­ports about the sale of un­reg­is­tered and ex­pired drugs through­out the coun­try, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) Mul­ti-Agency Task Force (MATF) in­ves­ti­gat­ed and seized 14,227 un­reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal items val­ued at over $1.5 mil­lion which are not al­lowed to be sold in the coun­try.

Op­er­a­tion Wind­sor was planned and ex­e­cut­ed in con­junc­tion with the MOH’s Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion (CFDD) at a ware­house at Tis­sue Dri­ve, Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tion of the ware­house was placed un­der im­me­di­ate quar­an­tine fol­low­ing the raid, ow­ing to the lack of a Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Whole­sale Li­cence and/or a li­censed phar­ma­cist at the site.

Yes­ter­day, while Deyals­ingh con­firmed that the sale of gener­ic drugs was le­gal, he un­der­scored it was not the same for un­reg­is­tered drugs.

“What we are af­ter, is un­reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals that we have no doc­u­men­ta­tion at CFDD, to prove that we have seen their Cer­tifi­cate of Analy­sis, that they are ad­her­ing to good man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es...that we have not seen the mono­graph, that’s what we are af­ter,” he said.

A mono­graph is a writ­ten doc­u­ment that re­flects the qual­i­ty at­trib­ut­es of med­i­cines ap­proved by the US Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion (US FDA).

Be­liev­ing the on­ly res­o­lu­tion to this sit­u­a­tion was the con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion of phar­ma­cists, Deyals­ingh urged phar­ma­cists, “Do not pur­chase drugs for sale that you can­not get an in­voice for.”

The min­is­ter said the min­istry would now go the route of pub­lish­ing an on­line reg­istry of reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in the next cou­ple of weeks. He said it now took less than six months to have drugs reg­is­tered and gazetted lo­cal­ly.

But Deyals­ingh claimed, “There is a move to al­ways find fault to ex­cuse wrong do­ing by a mi­nor­i­ty.”

He warned that the MOH could and would not al­low the mi­nor­i­ty of phar­ma­cies that were not do­ing the right thing, to en­dan­ger the lives of the pub­lic

He ad­vised the pub­lic to form a re­la­tion­ship with a phar­ma­cy and to ques­tion the phar­ma­cist if in doubt—and al­so ask to see the in­voice for whom they bought and were sell­ing drugs as a last re­sort.